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hairyfigment comments on Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale - Less Wrong
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You have more certainty than I do.
It could have been meant literally at some point, and the claim "it is there only as a metaphor" could have been inserted afterwards. If it traces back to a pre-Christian creation myth that got to be part of the Bible as an accident of history, it probably was meant literally at some point, and not just in a "this weird sect takes it literally" way, but in how it was generally understood.
Furthermore, there are other passages in the Bible that are not taken literally now, but were taken literally recently enough for that to have happened within recorded history. People only began to say they shouldn't be taken literally when taking them literally became embarrassing.
Reply to an old comment about literalism:
Yes, but every version of the Torah we have contains parts from different, incompatible versions of the story. The Redactor who put them together had a clear preference (I think) for the Priestly text, but was willing to include stories that contradicted it (at least as a political compromise).